BST 322
Independent Project Background of the study: The data in the dataset comes from a longitudinal study of low-income women in four urban communities. In the original study, extensive information was collected in 1999 (Wave 1) and 2001 (Wave 2) from about 4,000 women. A major purpose of the study was to understand the life trajectories of these women and their children during a period of major changes to social policies affecting poor people in the United States. The sample was randomly selected from women who, in 1995, were single mothers receiving cash welfare assistance in the four cities. All data were collected by means of 90-minute in-person interviews in either English or Spanish in the study participants’ …show more content…
The table also shows that the median is 48.7, which means that half of the sample size falls above or below 48.7, a score which is still lower than the average national mental health score. Table 4 is a frequency table result for mental health in ascending order. This table gives us the mode of 60.75 which is the score that occurred most often at a frequency of 17. The level of skewness of -0.5805 means that the distribution is negatively skewed with a longer tail pointing to the left with more scores at the lower end of mental health spectrum. Finally, the kurtosis value of -0.231 tells us that the distribution is platykurtic and slightly flatter than a normal distribution. The most significant information given in the tables above is that the mean sample measurement of mental health scores is lower than the national average mental health score. This means that this sample of women generally have a less favorable mental health score.
Education and Poverty
3. Evaluating the relationship between Levels of Education and Poverty
Table 5. Contingency table of Level of Education and Poverty Level of Education | Poverty | | Above poverty | Below poverty | Total | No high school diplomaCount(Column %)(Total %) | 77
(35.32%)
(7.963%) | 379
(50.6%)
(39.19%) | 456
(47.16%)
(47.16%) | Diploma or GEDCount(Column %)(Total %) | 131
(60.09%)
(13.55%) | 348